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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22755295">don't change a hair for me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter'>susiecarter</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Eye Candy (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blind Date, Consent Issues, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Extra Treat, M/M, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Overstimulation, Sexting, Under-negotiated Kink, Valentine's Day</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 05:14:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,485</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22755295</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tommy's phone buzzes, he lets himself hope for a second that it's a message from Lindy.</p>
<p>But it's not her. It's—an app notification.</p>
<p>Tommy stares down at it, trying to identify the icon. And then it comes to him. Flirtual.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bubonic/Tommy Calligan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Chocolate Box - Round 5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>don't change a hair for me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrine/gifts">Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine)</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Please accept my apologies for the lateness of this treat—I just couldn't possibly resist your suggestion for Bubonic messing with Tommy's head for Valentine's Day! ... In a porny way, as it turned out. :D I hope you enjoy this, and happy Chocolate Box! ♥</p>
<p>Title borrowed from the lyrics of My Funny Valentine, naturally.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>When Tommy's phone buzzes, he lets himself hope for a second that it's a message from Lindy.</p>
<p>It usually isn't. She does text now and then, just to let him know she's alive. But not more than once a week, and he's already gotten this week's.</p>
<p>He checks anyway. She probably doesn't need his help; but if she ever does, he wants to be there. He's not going to leave her hanging.</p>
<p>It's not her. It's—an app notification.</p>
<p>Tommy stares down at it, trying to identify the icon. And then it comes to him. Flirtual.</p>
<p>Man, it's been ages. He has an account, yeah, but he hadn't been using it all that often even before the thing with the serial killer. It had been useful a couple times on that case—just having it, being able to check it in front of people or show them his profile. A certain kind of undercover ID, almost: it had been his, legitimately, photo and all, and of course it didn't say COP on it. Made him seem real to people, just another guy in IRL hoping to find a match later.</p>
<p>But he turned off most of the standard notifications ages ago. He doesn't get a popup when he's matched with somebody, when one of them wants to chat with him, or even when somebody sends him a DM.</p>
<p>So this must be something else.</p>
<p>App update he's been ignoring too long, maybe. He thumbs it, unlocks the phone, and checks.</p>
<p>"Your Flirtual Valentine's Day blind date is ready," he reads off the screen skeptically.</p>
<p>The app's opened up with about five screens of explanations to swipe his way through, cheerfully explaining the gimmick to him. He's been matched with a user in his area, he learns; someone completely new to him, not one of his existing matches, no one he's ever contacted through Flirtual before. They've been connected in a special chat, one-on-one—with absolutely no profile images or identifying information visible to each other.</p>
<p>Right, okay. Blind date.</p>
<p>He finally gets through all of it, and reaches the chat window underneath. And, sure enough, it looks almost the same as normal except for the subtle pink-toned wash over everything, and the thick blurring effect that's been applied: both where Tommy's handle and main photo would normally show up, and where the other person's would.</p>
<p>Tommy finds himself squinting down at it, as if he's going to be able to pick anything useful or meaningful out of that medium-dark blob.</p>
<p>That's the whole point of this rigmarole. But it's human nature, maybe, to be curious anyway.</p>
<p>Tommy shakes his head at himself, laughing half a breath through his nose. He shouldn't bother, probably. But—hell, what could it hurt? Why not?</p>
<p>He's stuck in the office for another few hours, at least. Paperwork, addressing requests from other departments, that sort of thing—Shaw's idea of an appropriate day's work for him, after he went haring off after Lindy yet again and then got possibly a little bit too motivated in the interrogation room later.</p>
<p>Maybe it'll be someone interesting. Someone fun, funny. Maybe it'll at least make a nice distraction, for a little while. Something easy, artificially simplified. Something harmless.</p>
<p><i>Hey</i>, he types. <i>Looks like we're blind dates for the day.</i></p>
<p>Just an opener, to see whether whoever it is wants to talk at all.</p>
<p>Maybe they don't. Maybe whatever it is they see in the dim blur that won't look anything like Tommy to them, they'll decide to give it a pass.</p>
<p>Couldn't blame them if they did, Tommy thinks, and laughs.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He doesn't get any new chat messages, after a couple hours.</p>
<p>They're probably just offline. Or like him—maybe they barely use Flirtual, didn't even give the app notification a second glance before swiping it away and going on about their day. Maybe they just aren't paying attention. Maybe they've already got a match they like, and they backed out of this "blind date" crap and are busy happily chatting with somebody they already know, somebody they're already into.</p>
<p>Good for them, Tommy decides, magnanimous. Good for them no matter which one it is, really: if they've got shit to do, a life outside of their phone; if they aren't bored and trapped like Tommy; if they've made a connection that's starting to matter to them.</p>
<p>He drops a few more lines into the chat anyway. Just because he can, just to have something to do that isn't the boring shit he's supposed to be doing.</p>
<p>
  <i>Hope you're having more fun today than I am.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>I guess it would be kind of hard not to, actually.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>What's this form doing in here? Like there weren't enough already. I didn't even discharge my firearm. Not that time.</i>
</p>
<p>Probably should have tried to be a little more circumspect, he thinks idly, rereading that last one. But it's looking increasingly likely that nobody's ever going to see the contents of this chat but him. No doubt Flirtual's going to dump it or wipe it or something once it's the fifteenth, anyway.</p>
<p>And it's just the truth. He hadn't fired at Jake once, not on the island, not in the train station. Shaw probably threw the officer-involved shooting paperwork in the pile just to make sure Tommy was paying attention.</p>
<p>It makes him laugh a little, though, thinking about whoever's on the other end of this chat catching <em>that</em> line, instead of any of Tommy's blander opening offerings. If they haven't already done it, that would probably be enough to convince them he's a weirdo and send them fleeing their "blind date" without looking back.</p>
<p>He shakes his head at himself, and sets his phone down.</p>
<p>And then, two minutes later, it buzzes.</p>
<p>
  <i>surely talking about discharging our firearms is more of a second date conversation</i>
</p>
<p>Tommy blinks down at it.</p>
<p>Or, apparently, maybe that's going to be just weird enough to actually catch their attention.</p>
<p><i>If you say so</i>, he sends, after a second. <i>I have to admit I've always been a little fuzzy on the rules.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>fourth edition to fifth edition was a rough transition for a lot of people</i>
</p>
<p>Tommy grins. Man, what a <em>nerd</em>.</p>
<p><i>Yeah, so I hear. Lucky I've got you to set me straight</i>, he sends.</p>
<p>Nothing. He was sitting around for hours before, and didn't think he'd get anything at all; but now that he has, now that he is, waiting five minutes is agonizing.</p>
<p>Maybe that was a bad choice of words, he starts to think. Straight—but <i>discharging our firearms</i>. Our. Would it be reading too much into it, to figure maybe that meant he was talking to a guy? He's pretty sure he'd left the option open, when he'd first filled out his profile. You never knew who you were going to need an excuse to approach, going undercover on the spur of the moment the way Tommy sometimes had to.</p>
<p>And it—it wasn't exactly inaccurate, either. Tommy's never made a big thing out of it, but—</p>
<p>
  <i>didn't mean to leave you hanging</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>just</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>had to check something</i>
</p>
<p>Huh. Tommy frowns a little.</p>
<p>But whatever it was, it must not have been anything bad, anything that was going to draw his chat partner's attention away; they're typing again already.</p>
<p>
  <i>so you don't discharge your firearm often, then</i>
</p>
<p>Tommy laughs, startled. He can feel faint heat creeping into his cheeks.</p>
<p>
  <i>I thought you said this was second-date conversation?</i>
</p>
<p><i>we only have a day to get to know each other better</i>, he gets, which—yeah, okay, fair enough. There's probably going to be some kind of option, at midnight, to keep this blind date as a match or not; and if they opt out, who knows? Maybe Flirtual will add a flag for it. Make sure not to match them in the regular app, ever again. <i>i figured we might as well speed things up a little</i></p>
<p>
  <i>You're pretty forward, huh?</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>i don't make a habit of artificially restraining myself in order to make other people more comfortable, no</i>
</p>
<p><i>It's not a bad thing</i>, Tommy sends, quick, fumbling over the letters. Because that sounded a little pissed off, and he doesn't want that. He doesn't want whoever this is to disappear again. <i>Just an observation. I like it.</i></p>
<p>Nothing, for almost a full minute.</p>
<p>
  <i>do you</i>
</p>
<p><i>Yeah</i>, Tommy sends instantly. <i>Yeah, I do. I don't have a lot of patience for bullshit myself.</i></p>
<p><i>i see</i>, he gets back, after another ten or fifteen seconds. <i>good to know</i></p>
<p>Tommy looks down at it. Perfectly ordinary words, and no reason to think they aren't sincere; but somewhere in his brain, something's telling him to read them as scathing sarcasm.</p>
<p>
  <i>and are you usually expected to fill out paperwork after discharging your firearm?</i>
</p>
<p>Jesus, back to that again? Tommy shakes his head, but the heat in his face had already been lingering, and now it's definitely not going anywhere.</p>
<p>He shifts a little in his chair, absent, and wets his lips. <i>It's standard procedure, but I can make an exception if I need to.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>Am I going to need to?</i>
</p>
<p>He types it in, and then wavers, thumb hovering over the option to send. He shouldn't. He shouldn't say this, he shouldn't be encouraging this. He shouldn't be sitting in the <em>office</em>, surrounded by cops and coworkers, practically <em>sexting</em> some stranger whose picture he hasn't even seen, whose name he doesn't know.</p>
<p>He hits send.</p>
<p>
  <i>so you do like forward after all</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>excellent</i>
</p>
<p>Tommy swallows. Fuck. This is such a bad idea.</p>
<p>
  <i>i wonder where you are right now</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>somewhere where you think you can get away with this, apparently</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>at work, if you're filling out forms</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>but with a desk you think you can hide this under, is that it?</i>
</p>
<p><i>There are restrooms in office buildings too, you know</i>, Tommy sends.</p>
<p>
  <i>but i don't think you're in one of them</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>i think you really are at your desk</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>at your desk, fully dressed, and you've already rolled your chair in just a little, because you're hard and you know you shouldn't be</i>
</p>
<p>Tommy bites down on a noise he definitely should not make, jesus fuck, and the hell of it is that whoever this is, they're right. He already had moved, absent, tucking himself in under the desk a little closer, reacting reflexively to the sensation of heat and weight between his legs, trying to hide it.</p>
<p>Because he <em>is</em> hard. Shit.</p>
<p><i>Am I</i>, he sends, as if it isn't true; as if he's just enjoying the dirty talk, waiting to see where it's going to go next.</p>
<p>
  <i>yes, i think you are</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>and i think the next thing you're going to do is reach down and press the heel of your hand against your dick</i>
</p>
<p>Tommy's free hand was already moving. He forces himself to pause; to breathe. To give himself a chance to pretend that when he finishes the motion, it's because he decided to, and not because some stranger on Flirtual knew he would, and told him to.</p>
<p>
  <i>press down harder</i>
</p>
<p>Tommy bites his lip, shifts in his chair. Does it.</p>
<p>
  <i>harder</i>
</p>
<p>He lets himself, just for a second; just to the edge of discomfort, pain, a dull ache that pounds in time with his pulse, right there where it's throbbing at the base of his dick. Jesus.</p>
<p>
  <i>don't take your cock out, though</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>just touch it</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>sit there and touch it</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>press your zipper down into it</i>
</p>
<p>Instructions, one right after the other. Hardly a pause, and they—they don't stop to ask whether he's doing it. As if there's no question; as if it hasn't occurred to them that he might not.</p>
<p>Which is fair, Tommy thinks hazily, because he <em>is</em> doing it.</p>
<p>He's already leaking a little in his boxers. He can feel it against himself, the places where the fabric's sticking down. It hasn't soaked through his jeans or anything, not yet. But pressing down against his cock like this, rubbing along the outline of it, it's—the friction would have been a lot even without that dampness, the material of his boxers dragging around, the sensitivity of wet skin doubled, tripled.</p>
<p>He presses his fingers along the line of his fly, the zipper of it, and pushes down, and has to bite into his lip to contain the jolt of it. It hurts, it aches; it's too much.</p>
<p>It's not enough.</p>
<p><i>You weren't kidding</i>, he sends, distantly impressed that he's managing to form most of the words without autocorrect's help. <i>You really don't like making things easy for people, do you?</i></p>
<p>
  <i>i'll pass up the obvious joke about the point here being to make things hard instead, and tell you to touch yourself the way you want to for a minute</i>
</p>
<p>Tommy swallows, and belatedly looks up.</p>
<p>Most of the team is actually out doing a search right now; Yeager got a warrant early in the afternoon that Shaw had been waiting on. There are still a couple people moving around in the office. He can hear them out there.</p>
<p>But they aren't likely to come looking for Tommy. They don't have any reason to, when he's on Shaw's shitlist and shut up in here doing busywork.</p>
<p>Which still doesn't make this anything close to a good idea—but goddamn, is it a relief just to undo his button, unzip that fucking fly. The pressure easing off is a pulse of pleasure, almost as sharp as coming.</p>
<p>He feels dimly guilty for it. Guilty, obscene. But now that he's here like this, the best thing to do is just to take care of it, as quickly as he can. Right? He might actually be more likely to run into somebody trying to get to the office bathrooms than if he just stayed here and dealt with it.</p>
<p>Half of his brain is aware that that's terrible reasoning, and that what he should actually do is put his phone the fuck down, zip his pants back up, and wait for his hard-on to go down like a rational adult who wouldn't ever jerk off in their workplace.</p>
<p>But apparently that's not the half of his brain that's in charge right now, because all he does is look down, and watch himself close a hand around his cock, just past the edge of his desk.</p>
<p>He doesn't usually play with himself the way this person has had him doing. Only a couple strokes, and he's already leaking even more, hot, racing his way toward the edge.</p>
<p>His phone buzzes.</p>
<p>"Fuck," he mutters, and tilts it in his other hand, makes himself look at it.</p>
<p>
  <i>now stop</i>
</p>
<p>Tommy hisses out a breath between his teeth—lifts his hand away from himself and then has to dig his fingers into his thigh, hard, to keep from just grabbing his cock again. He's getting close, he can <em>feel</em> it. Fuck this stupid sexting bullshit; he should just finish himself off.</p>
<p>He tells himself that once, twice.</p>
<p>He doesn't do it.</p>
<p>
  <i>how's that feel?</i>
</p>
<p><i>Aches</i>, Tommy admits. <i>I don't usually stop until I'm done. I don't fuck around like this.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>but you like it</i>
</p>
<p>Tommy stares down at the letters. He doesn't know what to say, whether to agree or disagree. His cock is <em>so</em> hard, furiously red, the head of it wet and shiny and seriously fucking obscene, jutting out through his fly like this, waist of his boxers pulled down and bunched up beneath it. He's still not touching it, but it almost doesn't matter; the skin of it is practically <em>tingling</em>, aftershocks of all the friction he'd rubbed into it with his jeans and his fly still shuddering their way along his nerves.</p>
<p>And if he'd just fucking come, it would be over with.</p>
<p>But he hasn't.</p>
<p>
  <i>touch yourself again</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>but slower this time</i>
</p>
<p>Tommy digs his teeth into his lip, and does it.</p>
<p>His thigh aches, sharp bright spots where his fingertips were, when he lets go of it. And getting a hand around his cock ratchets him almost back up where he was before in the space of about a second, a hot dizzy rush—but he grips himself carefully, keeps his hand steady, and then strokes up toward the head as slow as he can bear.</p>
<p>Fuck. <em>Fuck</em>.</p>
<p><i>squeeze hard</i>, his stupid fucking asshole phone tells him. <i>harder than you want to</i></p>
<p>And god, that just makes it worse. The drag of skin-on-skin, where he was already too sensitive—he squirms in his chair, pants a little, squeezes the phone so tight in his other hand that he's dimly worried the screen might crack.</p>
<p>
  <i>God, come on, can't I just</i>
</p>
<p>He doesn't know how to finish the message, sends it half-typed, and he can just imagine how that'll make whoever's on the other end smirk.</p>
<p>
  <i>two more strokes</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>even slower</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>then you can come</i>
</p>
<p>And man, Tommy can't decide whether having that finish line makes it better or worse. Knowing it's there, but that he hasn't reached it: has to rub his hand back down and start over, one whole long stretched-out stroke in front of him, and another after that—</p>
<p>He keeps his grip tighter than he wants it, even though his blind date didn't specify this time. It aches; it <em>burns</em>, the friction cranked up to fucking excruciating. He can't stop gasping, even though he's barely doing anything—can't catch his breath, somehow, even there's no reason he should be running out of it.</p>
<p>One more stroke, he thinks dimly.</p>
<p>He fucks up, right at the end—catches the head of his dick with his thumb, and jerks, and he didn't mean to but he's already sort of coming. He lets the phone fall to the desk, shoves his other hand down and strokes himself blindly through the rest of it, eyes screwed shut, throat aching.</p>
<p>Jesus.</p>
<p>He steadies himself against the desk, when it's over, and blinks down at the phone.</p>
<p>It landed screen-up: <i>keep touching yourself after</i></p>
<p>Tommy swallows.</p>
<p>As if he weren't oversensitized enough already. He grits his teeth and settles his fingertips cautiously against his cock—still hot, heavy, half-hard, but softening.</p>
<p>Not bad, he tells himself. He can take it.</p>
<p>He moves his hand, flattens his palm along the length of himself and rubs a little.</p>
<p>And fuck, he has to squirm again, he can't stop himself. It's too much. It's uncomfortable.</p>
<p><i>Can I stop yet</i>, he sends, even though whoever's on the other end can't have any idea how long he's been doing it.</p>
<p>
  <i>mm, not yet</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>keep going</i>
</p>
<p>Shit. Tommy draws a long slow breath through his nose. It's not like he has to. They won't know if he doesn't.</p>
<p>But fuck, there's something about being told to that's fucking hot. And he wants to, kind of. He wants to see whether he can—wants to prove himself equal to the dare implicit in it.</p>
<p>He touches himself again, grimacing a little, biting the inside of his cheek. The dampness is starting to turn to stickiness; he managed to get most of his come on his hands, and he should have stopped to clean it off with a tissue but he hasn't.</p>
<p>He really should stop.</p>
<p>
  <i>all right, that's enough</i>
</p>
<p>He stops, a breath caught in the back of his throat that definitely isn't half a sob of relief. Fucking hell.</p>
<p>
  <i>nicely done</i>
</p>
<p>Tommy flushes hot. Jesus.</p>
<p>
  <i>you follow orders better than i would have expected, detective</i>
</p>
<p>Tommy blinks down at the phone.</p>
<p>It doesn't mean anything, obviously. It's not that big a leap, from filling out forms about discharging firearms to "cop". And there are plenty of people out there who don't know enough about police ranks to bother asking whether he's a patrol officer or a detective, or to think there's a meaningful difference.</p>
<p><i>Thanks</i>, Tommy sends. <i>I think.</i></p>
<p>
  <i>and just think</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>what a nice anniversary valentine's day will make</i>
</p>
<p>Tommy stares at the phone until the screen shuts off. And then he realizes he's still sitting in his office with his pants open and his cock out, come all over his hands, and jerks into motion to start hurriedly cleaning himself up.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Flirtual actually does give him the chance to opt into his blind date as an official match, that evening.</p>
<p>Tommy hasn't added anything to the chat since—since earlier. He doesn't know what the fuck to say. It's—it couldn't be. There's no way. Just coincidence, and he shouldn't have let himself get so spooked over it.</p>
<p>Just coincidence.</p>
<p>He looks at the pop-up question, the blank radio buttons. And then he draws a long slow breath, and opts in.</p>
<p>And whether that was who he's starting to think it was or not—well. He doesn't know what to think. He doesn't know what the fuck he's going to do.</p>
<p>He'll just have to wait and see.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
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